EDITORIAL: Around the world

Friday, January 4, 2013

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., on cancer drug shortages:

Disgraceful. That's the best description of the findings released recently that show unnecessary and damaging shortages of some cancer-treating drugs have led to relapses among some kids fighting cancer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and elsewhere.

It wasn't the hospital's fault. In fact, it was St. Jude that blew the whistle on this disgrace.

A St. Jude investigator, Dr. Monika Metzger, led a blue-ribbon team from Stanford University School of Medicine and Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, among others, in a study of what happens to children who lose access to a certain cancer-fighting drug and have to shift to substitute drugs during treatment.

Often, the results are shocking. The children get much sicker. They suffer from more severe side effects. Sometimes their cancer returns.

And it doesn't have to be that way. Stronger regulation and oversight of drug supplies, plus better product and inventory management by private drug manufacturers, could fix this problem.

That kids are suffering needlessly because of glitches in our drug manufacturing processes is unacceptable.

The Telegraph, London, on the U.S. government in denial:

The fiscal cliff was concocted by President Barack Obama and Congress as a way of holding a gun to their own heads. The fixing of a deadline for the automatic imposition of ferocious tax rises and deep spending cuts was supposed to concentrate the minds of America's political leaders and force them into taking the difficult decisions required to start reeling in the country's truly terrifying levels of public debt.

The stratagem has failed. Given that the United States has a $16 trillion burden of debt and an annual budget deficit of $1.1 trillion, this package does not even begin to address the fiscal crisis.

As the powerhouse of the world economy, America cannot continue to live in denial and expect to maintain its dominant role. Its current debt trajectory is leading the country to ruination.

The Jerusalem Post on Israeli President Shimon Peres' duty:

President Shimon Peres is under fire, once again, for speaking his mind. During an annual conference of Israel's ambassadors, Peres sounded off on an issue close to his heart: peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as a "partner for peace," Peres declared that there was no alternative to the two-state solution.

In response, the Likud Beytenu party issued a statement saying, "It's very unfortunate that the president chose to express a personal political view that is detached from public opinion when it comes to Abbas, who refuses to make peace."

This is not the first time Peres has intervened on controversial political matters, matters that have normally been avoided in the past by the men who have served as president.

Attacks on a president for making controversial comments are usually motivated by political considerations. Rarely are they the result of a principled position on the limits of a president's powers and functions, though they are sometimes disguised as such. Whether we agree or not, we should be lenient with a president's occasional political comment, particularly when made by a man of Peres's stature.